


On second thought, driving off a cliff would probably be less painful.

by orphan_account



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: And Alphonse is the best at getting revenge, Edward can't drive to save his life, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Prompt Fic, Rush Valley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-26
Updated: 2014-01-26
Packaged: 2018-01-10 02:12:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1153540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So this story begins with a car. A very specific type of car. Very specifically, the type of car that has sat on the used car lot for possibly million of years at this point to the point where the salesmen have no idea who brought it in in the first place, the managers assign sale of that car to whichever poor slop-buckets they plan to fire, and a few scientists have set up shop trying to fit the car into the theory of spontaneous generation of life. Naturally, none of the salesmen is too amused, but true scientists cannot be stopped (except by bribes in the form of new test tube racks and burets).</p><p>-------------------------------------------------------</p><p>Ed has a date with Winry at sundown. Ed also has a new car, courtesy of his brother. Too bad said car was clearly fashioned by the devil incarnate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On second thought, driving off a cliff would probably be less painful.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt: "according to CoS Ed can't drive t O SA V E HIS F CunKCUiNG LIFIEiifei ?!? so please write a fic about Ed not being able to drive to save his fucking life. also Al. also make the car super crappy. do it. just fucking do it gc."
> 
> This takes place sometime post-Brotherhood in Rush Valley.
> 
> The title refers to my favourite scene in the entire 2003 anime if you were curious.

So this story begins with a car. A very specific type of car. Very specifically, the type of car that has sat on the used car lot for possibly million of years at this point to the point where the salesmen have no idea who brought it in in the first place, the managers assign sale of that car to whichever poor slop-buckets they plan to fire, and a few scientists have set up shop trying to fit the car into the theory of spontaneous generation of life. Naturally, none of the salesmen is too amused, but true scientists cannot be stopped (except by bribes in the form of new test tube racks and burets).

The car in question can only be described by likening it to college student following an all-night drunk party (technically, it’s a _traditional Drachman celebration of the potato harvest, you uncultured Amestrisian-centric rude asslamp, excuse me for attempting to broaden my horizons while you seem so set on setting my brain cells on fire with your unbelievably unwelcome presence which could in no universe be construed as_ presents _you fucking obtuse sack of sandwich meat_ , but then again Edward Elric has never prided himself on brevity), or, in other words, sprawled, unsightly, filthy, utterly unwilling to work, and looking and smelling faintly of vomit. Indeed, the last time the salesmen made a valiant effort to wash the layers of dirt caked on the vehicle like makeup on a prostitute with rent due tomorrow, they discovered a yellowish-green phlegm topped with a creamy brown smear of a series of tater tots someone evidently considered worthy of a custom paint job. Therefore, when a well-dressed drop of distilled sunshine strolls into the dealership and inquires, the manager in charge almost calls the police.

“Hell,” says Edward Elric as if he’s been there, and given that he’s eaten Winry’s cooking, he probably has. “What the everloving fuck is that.”

“That,” answers Alphonse with that pleasant smile which Ed has come to associated with being completely and utterly fucked in every sense of the word but the good one, “is your new ride.” He tosses the live grenade—sorry, the keys—and Ed catches them reflexively, holding them out in front of him like a five-week-old raw fish. Turning about, Al makes to leave, waving over his shoulder. “Enjoy, Brother.”

“Dammit, Al, it looks like something shat out of a Xingese scrap factory! What’d you do, ask _Mustang_ to design it?!” Yet Al is leaving, vanishing, fading away along with the last of Ed’s hopes and dreams. “ _This_ is what I get for being your hardworking older brother! _This_ is what I get for getting your body back! _This_ is what I get for striving and straining and pushing with all of my might for my entire life, is it?! What kind of fucked up retribution _is_ this?”

Al pauses at the edge of the parking lot. With the rising sun silhouetting him in molten gold and the wind rippling his hawk’s wing bangs, he parts his lips to allow words of gospel to roll from his sacred tongue. His smile could make an angel shed his wings (or maybe he’s that angel, shed his wings for the most undeserving, pathetic crock of shit known to man). “No, Brother. Equivalent exchange, plus one.” On second thought, scratch that. More like a really beautiful devil. Ed’s heard that they’re good at that (as Havoc would confirm). “You destroyed my car for a drag race.” Ed would argue that showing up and shutting up a goose-gaggle of fucking street urchins blazing up the alleys with their jacked-up rides would _at least_ constitute a serious effort at achieving world peace. “I destroyed yours and purchased you a new one. Plus one.”

“ _At least you could transmute the goddamn shitty-ass_ —”

“Now, good-bye, Brother. Have fun on your date.” With that firm Elric determination, Al disappears whole into the great unknown, and Ed disappears whole into the great “what the fucking fuck in the name of everlasting fuck motherfucking goddamn fucking mayor of fucksville in the nation of fuck-metris general fuck of the fucking army ha ha maybe Winry will have zero fucks to give and maybe I could change my name and move to Xing” state of mind.

He recites the elements, as he does periodically, and glances at the car. The vehicle squats there in its chunks-of-spagbol-throw-up glory. Its dented headlights seem to beckon, call him to the challenge of ancient gods, to test his mettle to the pedal and start revving at full throttle. Wielding the key like the sacred sword of the fabled knight, Ed accepts the challenge. First he asserts his dominance via the elaborate courtship ritual of a true alpha male. With his hands on his hips and his legs firmly opened wide, Ed bends slightly towards the hood, lifting himself slightly on the tips of his toes to more fully tower over the vehicle, and assumes the patented Elric _you-wanna-fuckin’-go_ position. “All right. It’s _go_ time, you absolute definition of shit. I’ve got a date with the most beautiful girl on the entire damn planet tonight and there’s no fucking way that a fixer-upper junkie’s wet dream of a twisted shit-pile of steel, cast iron, and chome is gonna fuck it up, you hear me?” The car continues to exist, apparently unperturbed by his shouting. Maybe if he squints at it hard enough, the car will spontaneously combust and an Aerugan pony car of beauty shalt rise from the ashes upon gilded wings. Or maybe the exact shade of what-the-actual-sugar-glazed-fuck on vomit-comet green will burn into his retinas, cursing him to stare into an artist’s personal hell for the rest of eternity.

Nervously he blinks and looks away. Oh god. _Green_. Fucking fucking fucking fu—

“Why’re ya lookin’ like you’re ‘bout to take a dump, Eddy? Aw, shit, I didn’t even bring of those doggy poop bags.”

Unlike the verdant forest of her pants, the sky blue of Paninya’s shirt provides a welcome relief. Ed instantly snaps back to standing straight (damn tall girls, damn them all, and especially damn that one tall girl who happened to be so perfect and intelligent and funny and sweet and did he fucking mention _perfect_ that one day all the molecules in his heart up and decided to vibrate to the frequency of hers). Brushing imaginary dirt from his shirt, Ed clears his throat and hooks his thumbs into his belt. “Remember when I broke Al’s car?”

Paninya whistles. “Damn. Remind me t’never get on _his_ bad side.” She pops her lips. “A’ight, well, first question.” Ed leans in to listen. “What kinna lacy-panty’d hell drugs was the designer _on_? ‘Cause ya might wanna get yourself some’n hole up somewhere ‘til tomorrow.”

His face falls. Although _falls_ doesn’t quite convey the calamity pickling his hopes in the vinegar of goddamnit-Al-this-is-why-we-can’t-have-nice-things: His face ascends to the diving board, dons a bright-red leotard, and fucking pirouettes off into the spinning vortex of fire below. “You,” he sputters, akin to the dead weight inside the car the salesmen claimed to be the engine, although Ed has never seen an engine with so many bits and bobs sticking out like that one time Mustang tried to transmute some sort of gift for Hawkeye (the salesman tapped it, heard a sickening crack and a whirling spring, and assured the prospective buyer that _this is a feature, not a bug, although the car might be a Bug under the fi_ —special edition _paintjob, one of a kind and very unique_ ), “are the single biggest asshole I’ve ever met.”

Paninya salutes. “Winry said the last thing last time she hooked up that strap-on.” She winks. “Aww, shame I don’t have some dough on me: I could bake a couple cookies on ‘em right now. Which’d probably increase the chances of that date of yours goin’ well at all, y’know?” At Ed’s continuing, steadily reddening blush, Paninya gestures towards the car. “Go ‘head’n unlock the li’l bitch. ‘Cause if the issue’s outside, we could probably up and repaint it right quick. But if the shit’s spewed chunks over the inside, too, then we gotta throw in all the towels ever.”

Brandishing the key before him as though it were a high religious artefact from a religion he didn’t believe in and therefore wouldn’t mind desecrating the holy objects thereof, Ed attempts to shove the shitty piece of plastic into the hole in the car door, breaks it, waits for Paninya to return with a superglued replacement, repeats the process several times, and smashes the lock. Upon opening the door at last, Ed feels himself carried away on a wave of vodka riding a child’s pool floatie crafted entirely from pure regret and borne aloft by a flock of pigeons desperately searching for a fuck to give amid the unadulterated choruses of “hey, hey, I’m giving up now” echoing through his head with a frequency and persistence that would rival the repetitive willpower of Maes Hughes’s ability to describe Elicia day in and day out (the man could talk to a tree and somehow come out on top): The interior décor appears to have been culled directly from the anal esophagus of a veritable fuck-ton of cherry blossoms. The floral pattern over the seats could move May Chang to tears, while that creepy psychopathic Kimblee would probably have creamed himself to gaze longingly upon the searingly off-white seats seriously threatening to make Ed go blind (maybe this is how he starts to need glasses). Every racist in Amestris has reincarnated into a bobblehead of a scantily clad Xingese woman, evidently glued to the dashboard by hitherto never-before-seen methods that could clearly rock the alchemical world. A dangerously sour-scented patch of yellow pools in the floor of the cramped backseat, built as though made for dolls, or made by a blind mechanic in thick, senseless gloves, or some hellish combination thereof. Cautiously he reaches out a hand to test the cushion. Something within the seat audibly bursts open with the noise of an exploding, fleshy pimple. The resultant tsunami of stench knocks down his child’s pool floatie into an endless whirlpool of revelations that he would either spend the rest of his life in the doghouse (Den would take his spot at the foot of Winry’s bed, damn that crafty canine, Winry’s feet are _his_ to cuddle and warm up).

In that moment the heavens open and God peers down at the world, points at Edward Elric, and rumbles, “Fuck him. Fuck _him_ in particular.”

“Right,” says Paninya, beginning to back away. She raises her arms defensively, and when Ed snaps his head up to glare at her, starts to liberally run away like a pregnant woman about to give birth were chasing her demanding her “expertise” for free. “Looks like this isn’t my forte. Good luck with fucking up your date, Eddy!”

With that his last chance of nailing his dreams goes the way of Havoc’s girlfriends: completely nonexistent but theoretically out there beyond the horizon. Yet he promised that he wouldn’t make her cry but for tears of joy. And he _won’t_ , dammit, as long as there is breath in his lungs.

He looks at the interior of the car again. The stench wraps itself around his nose, and he coughs up a lung or three.

Maybe there _isn’t_ breath in his lungs after all.

Very well. And he _won’t_ , dammit, as long as there is blood in his veins.

Although given Winry’s most likely reaction to being shown a piece of utter some drunk moron called a _car_ for shits and giggles only to be somehow taken seriously by his equally drunk moron friends, he doubts if much blood will remain in his veins by the day’s end (if the hostage situation hadn’t prevented her intervention on the Promised Day, her wrench would have finished the fight within five seconds).

He spends the day trudging around Rush Valley seeking a replacement of some form or fashion. Questions about the price of a normal car and remembers he’s no longer a State Alchemist. Questions about the price of getting an alchemist to fix his old one and seriously considers applying to be a State Alchemist again. Questions about the price of borrowing a car from the street kids and calculates the probability of him bullshitting a State Alchemy exam and returning home before the date.

By the time Ed trudges tiredly back to the parking lot, the car has not budged so much as a centimetre, the dented headlights still beckoning the challenge. He stares at it. And sinks to his knees.

He, Edward Motherfucking You Wanna Fucking Go Son Of The Golden Sage Former Fullmetal Alchemist Saved Millions Of People On The Promised Day Dating Winry Goddamn Rockbell Elric, in order of increasing accomplishment, has been bested by a fucking shitheap crapped out a billion years ago and fished out of the festering cesspool of the car god’s chafed buttocks.

Suddenly an unexplained force compels him to look back over his shoulder. Al. With the now-setting sun silhouetting him in molten gold and the wind rippling his hawk’s wing bangs, he parts his lips to allow words of gospel to roll from his sacred tongue. “Hi, Brother. Your date’s in twenty minutes.”

Ed lowers his head miserably. Twelve hours of hunting down another vehicle with twenty minutes until his execution and even Edward Elric has a right to his misery. Not being able to uncover Dr Marcoh’s notes? Easy enough: he could be fucking pissed as a skinned bear at himself. Not being able to make Winry happy?

Fuck him with a dry flaming rapidly rotating screwdriver the size of a fucking train engine (he’s no doubt Ling could procure one and has probably tried something similar in the past, although honestly imagining the crazy shit Ling has undoubtedly shoved up his butt at one point is not high on Ed’s to-do list today or any other point in his life).

“Brother?” Ed lifts his chin and regards Al glumly through his sweat-dampened bangs. Waving, Al offers his kneeling brother a hand. “I have a present for you. For you _and_ Winry.”

“If it’s another car,” says Ed solemnly, sliding his fingers between Al’s, “I’m throwing out every single damn cat plate we own, do you _hear_ me?”

Al beams at him. “Even the set with the kittens playing with balloons?”

“ _Especially_ the set with the motherfucking kittens playing with the motherfucking balloons.”

“I don’t recall,” Al answers, tilting his head to one side, “owning a plate with motherfucking kittens.”

The look Ed shoots him could kill a grown mustang (he makes a mental note to try that on the fucking bastard next time their paths unfortunately intersect). “Don’t say _fucking_.”

“Mm, but you will in a second.”

They round the corner, and Ed’s mouth less drops open so much as falls off of his face entirely, burrows through the centre of the earth, ignores the weird-ass tripping dinosaurs and giant mushrooms, shoots straight through a crowded Xingese dinner, and lands somewhere on the other fucking side of the futon-shitting universe.

Illuminated by a golden pool of dying sunlight is a magnificent beast of a vehicle, engine practically purring despite technically being off, chrome glinting, hood long and proud, headlights angled slightly like arched eyebrows awaiting the challenge, a single fin profiling the cement shark, sleek and aerodynamic as though begging for someone (Ed) to throw himself behind the wheel and shift through the gears in a matter of milliseconds. He runs his hands over the cool steel, feels the smooth curves, delights in the simplistic aesthetic of _quick_.

Ed’s old car. But recreated into a thing of beauty, into a pure manifestation of the need for speed, into the kind of ride that Winry would trip over herself to get a chance to drive (he still hasn’t told Al that she’s the one who crashed the car in the first place).

As beautiful as the golden boy humming cheerfully by his side.

Slowly turning, Ed parts his arms and throws them around his brother, raising up Al into the sky with his tight embrace and twirling him around. “Brother!” Al yelps through his laughter.

“Dammit, Al,” Ed growls, holding his brother close, “I fucking love you.”

“Did you really think I was going to leave you with a car like that?” Al wrinkles his nose, and Ed ruffles his hair as affectionately as physically possible and then some (not that that which is physically possible has never stopped an Elric). “Brother, _no_.”

Ed snorts out a laugh. “Goddammit. I can’t believe you, you crazy motherfucker. Just. I love you, y’know?”

“Promise you won’t crash my car next time?” asks Al, the corners of his mouth quirking upwards into that half-moon smile that has brightened and led him through every dark night. “Or at _least_ use yours.”

Another hair ruffle. “I promise.”

Al’s eyes shine, and he gently touches his knuckles to Ed’s. “Then go, Brother. Make Winry happy, okay?”

Ed nods, grinning determinedly. “You bet I will.”

(Funny, too, how Ed and Winry manage to laugh their way to the hospital after he crashes the car, again. And funnier, too, how Al and Paninya are already there with a tray of cookies to greet them. And funniest, of course, how Al hands Ed a drink the morning after and inquires if they remembered to use a condom.

(“Although,” says Al on second thought to an Ed passed away from sheer motification, “based on the sounds you were making, I _don’t_ think you quite needed one.”)


End file.
